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Naval Ship Roles
NOTE: This is more of a guideline than a set of rules. Don't lose your shit people. A navy or maritime force is a fleet of waterborne military vessels (watercraft) and its associated naval aviation, both sea-based and land-based. It is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral, or ocean-borne combat operations and related functions. It includes anything conducted by surface ships, amphibious ships, submarines, and seaborne aviation, as well as ancillary support, communications, training, and other fields. The strategic offensive role of a navy is projection of force into areas beyond a country's shores (for example, to protect sea-lanes, ferry troops, or attack other navies, ports, or shore installations). The strategic defensive purpose of a navy is to frustrate seaborne projection-of-force by enemies. The strategic task of the navy also may incorporate nuclear deterrence by use of submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Naval operations can be broadly divided between riverine and littoral applications (brown-water navy), open-ocean applications (blue-water navy), and something in between (green-water navy), although these distinctions are more about strategic scope than tactical or operational division. In most nations, the term "naval", as opposed to "navy", is interpreted as encompassing all maritime military forces, e.g., navy, naval infantry/marine corps, and coast guard forces. Aircraft Carriers An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seagoing airbase, equipped with a full-length flight deck and facilities for carrying, arming, deploying, and recovering aircraft. Typically, it is the capital ship of a fleet, as it allows a naval force to project air power worldwide without depending on local bases for staging aircraft operations. Aircraft carriers are expensive to build and are critical assets. Carriers have evolved since their inception in the early twentieth century from wooden vessels used to deploy balloons to nuclear-powered warships that carry numerous fighter planes, strike aircraft, helicopters, and other types of aircraft. While it is possible to launch heavier aircraft such as fixed-wing gunships and bombers (it has been done) from aircraft carriers, it is virtually impossible to land them. Fleet Aircraft Carriers These carriers are the largest of this type, carrying the most aircraft and generally are the center of battle fleets. * DS Sentinel * P6 Type Carrier Light Aircraft Carriers These are cheaper alternatives to Fleet carriers. While they are smaller, they are just as fast, allowing them to be deployed as the main strike force in less important areas. * Aircraft Carrier Fearless Escort Aircraft Carriers These are typically half the length and a third the displacement of larger fleet carriers. While they are slower, carry fewer planes and were less well armed and armored, escort carriers are cheaper and could be built quickly, which is their principal advantage. Escort carriers can be completed in greater numbers as a stop-gap when fleet carriers are scarce. However, the lack of protection makes escort carriers particularly vulnerable and may were sunk with great loss of life. The light carrier (hull classification symbol CVL) is a similar concept to escort carriers in most respects, but were capable of higher speeds to allow operation alongside fleet carriers. * Saber Class Capital Ships The capital ships of a navy are its most important warships; they are generally the larger ships when compared to other warships in their respective fleet. A capital ship is generally a leading or a primary ship in a naval fleet. Battleships A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries the battleship was the most powerful type of warship, and a fleet of battleships was considered vital for any nation that desired to maintain command of the sea. The word battleship was coined around 1794 and is a contraction of the phrase line-of-battle ship, the dominant wooden warship during the Age of Sail. The term came into formal use in the late 1880s to describe a type of ironclad warship, now referred to by historians as pre-dreadnought battleships. In 1906, the commissioning of HMS Dreadnought heralded a revolution in battleship design. Subsequent battleship designs, influenced by HMS Dreadnought, were referred to as "dreadnoughts". * B2 Type * DS Assertor Battlecruisers The battlecruiser, or battle cruiser, was a type of capital ship of the first half of the 20th century. They were similar in size, cost, and armament to battleships, but they generally carried less armour in order to obtain faster speeds. The first battlecruisers were designed in the United Kingdom in the first decade of the century, as a development of the armoured cruiser, at the same time as the dreadnought succeeded the pre-dreadnought battleship. The goal of the design was to outrun any ship with similar armament, and chase down any ship with lesser armament; they were intended to hunt down slower, older armoured cruisers and destroy them with heavy gunfire while avoiding combat with the more powerful but slower battleships. However, as more and more battlecruisers were built, they were increasingly used alongside the better-protected battleships. * Orion class * Warrior class * DGS Angel * Azure Lane Class Battlecruiser Anti-Orbital Battleships Heavily armored battleships with starship-like armament with a vertical attitude. These ships are very vulnerable to surface action vessels. * B3 Type Large Cruisers Large Cruisers are an intermediate design between battlecruisers and heavy cruisers. These ships generally kept the higher speed of heavy cruisers and the complicated armor schemes inherited from battleships in the battlecruisers. Armament usually is 11 or 12 inch guns, which makes these ships capable of doing short range merchant raiding. * Lion Class * Ranger Class * Nemesis Class Heavy Cruisers The heavy cruiser was a type of cruiser, a naval warship designed for long range and high speed, armed generally with naval guns of roughly 203mm calibre (8 inches in caliber) of whose design parameters were dictated by the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930. The heavy cruiser can be seen as a lineage of ship design from 1915 through the early 1950's, although the term 'heavy cruiser' only came into formal use in 1930. The heavy cruiser's immediate precursors were the light cruiser designs of the 1900s and 1910s, rather than the armoured cruisers of before 1905. When the armoured cruiser was supplanted by the battlecruiser, an intermediate ship type between this and the light cruiser was found to be needed—one larger and more powerful than the light cruisers of a potential enemy but not as large and expensive as the battlecruiser so as to be built in sufficient numbers to protect merchant ships and serve in a number of combat theaters. * Dominator class * Combined Admiralty Class Minor Surface Combatants Light Cruisers A light cruiser is a type of small- or medium-sized warship. The term is a shortening of the phrase "light armored cruiser", describing a small ship that carried armor in the same way as an armored cruiser: a protective belt and deck. Prior to this smaller cruisers had been of the protected cruiser model, possessing armored decks only. While lighter and smaller than other contemporary ships they were still true cruisers, retaining the extended radius of action and self sufficiency to act independently across the world. Through their history they served in a variety of roles, primarily as convoy escorts and destroyer command ships, but also as scouts and fleet support vessels for battle fleets. * Honor class * Agincourt Class Destroyers In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, maneuverable long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against smaller powerful short-range attackers. They were originally developed in the late 19th century as a defence against torpedo boats, and by the time of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, these "torpedo boat destroyers" (TBDs) were "large, swift, and powerfully armed torpedo boats designed to destroy other torpedo boats." Although the term "destroyer" had been used interchangeably with "TBD" and "torpedo boat destroyer" by navies since 1892, the term "torpedo boat destroyer" had been generally shortened to simply "destroyer" by nearly all navies by the First World War. * Noble class * Bremen Class Submarines Attack Submarines An attack submarine or hunter-killer submarine is a submarine specifically designed for the purpose of attacking and sinking other submarines, surface combatants and merchant vessels. In the Soviet and Russian navies they were and are called "multi-purpose submarines". They are also used to protect friendly surface combatants and missile submarines. Some attack subs are also armed with cruise missiles mounted in vertical launch tubes, increasing the scope of their potential missions to include land targets. * Golf-S class Ballistic Missile Submarines A ballistic missile submarine is a submarine deploying submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) with nuclear warheads. The United States Navy's hull classification symbols for ballistic missile submarines are SSB and SSBN - the SS denotes submarine (or submersible ship), the B'' denotes ballistic missile, and the ''N denotes that the submarine is nuclear-powered. These submarines became a major weapon system in the Cold War because of their nuclear deterrence capability. They can fire missiles thousands of kilometers from their targets, and acoustic quieting makes them difficult to detect (see acoustic signature), thus making them a survivable deterrent in the event of a first strike and a key element of the mutual assured destruction policy of nuclear deterrence. * Bloody Mary class Small Craft Torpedo Boats A torpedo boat is a relatively small and fast naval ship designed to carry torpedoes into battle. The first designs rammed enemy ships with explosive spar torpedoes, and later designs launched self-propelled Whitehead torpedoes. They were created to counter battleships and other slow and heavily armed ships by using speed, agility, and the power of their torpedo weapons. A number of inexpensive torpedo boats attacking en masse could overwhelm a larger ship's ability to fight them off using its large but cumbersome guns. An inexpensive fleet of torpedo boats could pose a threat to much larger and more expensive fleets of capital ships, albeit only in the coastal areas to which their small size and limited fuel load restricted them. Midget Submarines A midget submarine (also called a mini submarine) is any submarine under 150 tons.1 Typically operated by a crew of one or two but sometimes up to 6 or 9, with little or no on-board living accommodation, they normally work with mother ships, from which they are launched and recovered, and which provide living accommodation for the crew and other support staff. Both military and civilian midget submarines have been built. Military types work with surface ships and other submarines as mother ships. Civilian and non-combatant military types are generally called submersibles, and normally work with surface ships. Support and Auxiliary Craft Tenders Tenders are ships that support smaller craft, such as Submarines, Float and Seaplanes, and Torpedo Boats due to their limited range in combat. Command and Control Ships Ships that are more similar to merchant ships that direct small craft, such as aircraft, torpedo boats, and midget submarines to a superior tactical position. Monitors A monitor was a relatively small warship which was neither fast nor strongly armoured but carried disproportionately large guns. They were used by some navies from the 1860s, during the First World War and with limited use in the Second World War. The term "monitor" also encompasses the strongest of riverine warcraft, known as river monitors. In the early 20th century, the term "monitor" was revived for shallow-draft armoured shore bombardment vessels, particularly those of the Royal Navy: the Lord Clive-class monitors carried guns firing heavier shells than any other warship ever has, seeing action (albeit briefly) against German targets during World War I. Minelayers and Minesweepers Minelaying is the act of deploying explosive mines. Historically this has been carried out by ships, submarines and aircraft. Additionally, since World War I the term minelayer refers specifically to a naval ship used for deploying naval mines.1 "Mine planting" was the term used for installing controlled mines at predetermined positions in connection with coastal fortifications or harbor approaches that would be detonated by shore control when a ship was fixed as being within the mine's effective range. A minesweeper is a small naval warship designed to engage in minesweeping. Using various mechanisms intended to counter the threat posed by naval mines, waterways are maintained clear for safe shipping. Miccelaneous Other smaller ships include gunboats, trawlers, drafted civilian ships, and icebreakers that provide for all the small, necessary needs the whole fleet depends on. Category:Vehicles Category:Rules